Rewriting the Story of Ötzi, the Murdered Iceman | Hacker News Reader

Rewriting the Story of Ötzi, the Murdered Iceman

smithsonianmag.com

42 pointsdiodorus14 comments

Somebody help me understand the conclusion of this article. They say that the body was regularly exposed to the air and somehow the current theory of climate change is responsible for it this time? The wording seems disingenuous to me even if technically correct.

What? How could you even arrive at that conclusion? It's not at all what the article says and the wording is pretty unambiguous.

> In addition, as ice continues to melt as a result of global warming, the findings suggest hikers—and researchers—may want to keep their eyes peeled for even more remarkable finds like Ötzi.

They are explicitly saying global warming which is the term du jour.

> They are explicitly saying global warming which is the term du jour.

Global warming is the old term. Climate change is the new one.

“Climate emergency” or “climate catastrophe” or “anthropocene boundary extinction event” are newer.

Your first comment sounds like it is saying something different than what the quote says. The quote just says: Ice melts due to current global warming, things get revealed in the ice. Where is the ambiguity?

I think @isthisthingon99 is objecting to an implication that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is the sole or even primary cause of things in the ice, such as Ötzi's corpse, being exposed. The new research suggests that the corpse was exposed several times over the millenia, obviously predating AGW, so why does the article tie exposure so closely to AGW?

But I don't think how the article is framing it is problematic. AGW has greatly increased the net rate of ice melting in most of the world. I'm not an archaeologist, but I would suspect that means things buried in ice are being exposed much more frequently now. So while other causes (eg non-anthropogenic or local warming) would have driven previous exposures, AGW might be the primary cause these days.

If that's true, then laying it out like the article does makes complete sense: AGW-driven melting is exposing what's under the ice, and the new research suggests that there may be more interesting remains under the ice than previously thought, so hikers might find some interesting stuff over the next decades.

I think they’re saying that scientists said that the mummy had been exposed to air multiple times (followed by being frozen in ice) in the past (presumably not attributed to Climate Change) but the last exposure which resulted in its discovery is attributed to climate change.

The implication is that either lower case climate change is a periodic thing or else something doesn't follow.

Yes, I just wish they would have used a less loaded term.

They also could have said "the climate has changed in the past, and today is no different".

But perhaps that would get them cancelled...

The conclusion rather states that the current melting speed increases the chance of now finding more Ötzis.

Contrary to popular belief, the last paragraph is not always the full conclusion.

I was referring to this:

> In addition, as ice continues to melt as a result of global warming, the findings suggest hikers—and researchers—may want to keep their eyes peeled for even more remarkable finds like Ötzi.

Which is in the prior paragraph.

Initially, they thought that ötzi was a one time coincidence of a man being stored in ice untouched for thousands of years. Now they found evidence that he was exposed to open air multiple times. So they are more hopeful for finding more like him.

Right. Tying it to "global warming" though seems disingenuous to me.

Global warming is what does the digging work. Archeologists would never dig through gigatons of ice on their own, just to perhaps find some old stuff.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com